


for peace above a weeping world

by gatsbyparty



Series: Elysiumstuck [3]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Ascension, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Unrequited Pale Longings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-15
Updated: 2012-08-15
Packaged: 2017-11-12 04:28:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/486700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gatsbyparty/pseuds/gatsbyparty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things go wrong with troll society from the first, and Kanaya Maryam isn't ready for it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	for peace above a weeping world

**Author's Note:**

> i am never going to capitalize a title i refuse

So it comes to pass a quarter of a sweep before Ascension that Kanaya Maryam, Morningstar of Heat Coast,  begins her preparations to leave the desert. She walks the dunes, nose to the wind, calling to mind memories that are little more than shades with the frequency of remembrance. Pricking her finger with a needle, her first video chat with a much older castemate, learning there were others that looked like her and spoke like her and thought like her. Grubmom makes sad  chough ing noises, but she doesn’t have much longer left and they both know it. A jadeblood’s lifespan is typically unpredictable, but an abdicated Mother Grub will have a halved lifetime at best. Kanaya has been lucky this long.   
  
The day before Kanaya leaves without looking back is the day her lusus stops breathing. It’s a sad thing, true, but there is much and more to be doing, and walking to Skaia will take near on the rest of the sweep. Roads and pathways, drinks in taverns, Echidna to Hephaestus, another thousand miles eastward, to the Heat Coast. Skaia and Black Harbor, the Well of Horrors; a desert girl on a city balcony looking out at the frothing humps of the Empress’s mother. Desert girls are a hell of a curiosity in Skaia, a curiosity and a treat and an  object , in a way Kanaya has never been looked at before.   
  
She learns quickly how to avoid the stares of the adults. There is a certain comfort in being near to maturity herself, and not given the same lingering looks as the younger generations, the probing stares for pupas. Adolescent pupation left her tall and square, instead of small and square, and isn’t that a blessing here?    
  
She meets the Fleet officer on the eve of Ascension at one of the Empress Ascendant’s Amaranthine Balls, the blowsy one in the badly darned uniform with a rip in the tibiofemoral braid. He’s small, of course, with blood that color, and her more meddlesome instincts make her follow him into a side room of the aboveground part of the palace. He makes a furious  beerk ing noise when he turns around, still fumbling with his torn braid. He has the most stupidly small horns Kanaya has ever seen. She begins to feel a bit light headed.   
  
“Fuck’s sake, can’t I even get a break in the load gaper? So fucking-oh, hell, you’re a green, I take it all back, d’you see me recanting all of the words about to come out my stupid fuckin’ mouth? Right, what can I do you?”   
  
“I hadn’t meant to intrude,” she says peaceably, “only I noticed that your left iris’s pigment had slipped a little to the side of your pupil and I wasn’t entirely sure if that was natural.”   
  
His face goes positively ruby and he whips round to look in the mirror, where, presumably, he notices the same tilt to his contact that Kanaya had at the banquet table.   
  
“No need for that,” she says as his hand darts down to the sickle on his hip. The hand pauses, jeks back up.    
  
“Why not?”   
  
A faint rattle picks up in the back of his throat, quickly tamped back down.   
  
“I have no interest in getting you in trouble for a secret that I’m sure you have reasons for keeping. Don’t get me wrong!” she says sharply when he opens his mouth again. “That hardly means I’m not curious about it. It just means I won’t turn you in for it.”   
  
He sets his mouth in a hard line, jabs his hand out to shake Kanaya’s and then drops her hand like it’s a lit bomb on fourth after periapsis.    
  
“Karkat Vantas, nominally a Threshectioner, though lately I’ve been nothing but a glorious fuck of background piece at the Imperatrix’s interminable fuckin’ balls.”   
  
“I’ve never heard her called the Imperatrix. Kanaya Maryam,” she pauses, momentarily flustered at her lack of employment, “well, I’m caste-inclined to be a dolorosa, but I’m more of a meddling bint that sews things.”   
  
“That’s right, you’re the country bumpkin. I’m kidding! Don’t look at me like I wounded you. Imperatrix is the Empress Ascendant. The Empress, may she reign in glory a thousand eternities, wouldn’t have a damn thing to do with wigglers playing dress up in her battleship. You could just call yourself a seamstress, it’d make fuck-all difference to anyone, you know.”   
  
“I suppose you’re right. Would you like me to reattach that for you?”   
  
“What, the braid? Yeah, why not, saves me an ass reaming.”   
  
She goes to lift him onto the counter like a wiggler, stops in horror, and waits for him to climb up and catch his balance. She has to angle up a bit, but it’s better than adjusting her silks to crouch. There’s a needle in her sporran, and thread is handy from the fraying braid, and it’s the work of moments to reattach it to his uniform. She drags it out, though, careful not to prick his grubleg scar, and pats the seam.   
  
“Woah, hey, Handsie McNeedlefingers, ask permission before you start playing grabass, I’ve got my quadrants full.”   
  
“Oh?” she says, puffing a noncommittal  nuk sound, stomach dropping out. Of course he’s got his quadrants full. She’d put money on there being a waitlist for his pale, wonders if there’s a support group for Pale-At-First-Sight-Across-A-Ballroom-For-Karkat-Vantas.    
  
  
“Stop making wiggler noises at me, it’s entirely too endearing and I haven’t even had my coffee.”   
  
“My apologies, officer.”   
  
“Oh, if we’re going to start with titles, Seamstress Nubfondler-”   
  
“You haven’t any nubs.”   
  
“Hey!”   
  
His outraged cry makes her double over with laughter, and she returns to the ball with a shoulder-height Threshecutioner on her arm. Ascension is the spectacle everyone expects, a horrendous mess of bombs and elderly lusii and entirely too much happy chirring. Kanaya returns to her hive within the hebdomad, though there is always an open channel on her network for Karkat Vantas and his revolutionary inclades.


End file.
